Quicken the Night
by wintergreen825
Summary: The ritual to reawaken the wards on the Potter estate demanded sacrifice, but under the cover of darkness, it was one that was easily made.


**Legal Disclaimer:** I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

**Warning:** This work may be offensive to some readers. Feel free to back out if that's you.

**Author's Note:** This is set post-war, where a Desi Harry has sought out his family history and found the Potter estate (which I have named _Kilnford_, in case that isn't clear). He finds instructions on how to reawaken the wards, and that's what he's doing in this fic. I also headcanon that Harry is ace, and ace people tend to have "weird" sexual histories, and frankly, our entire relationship with sex is what most allos would define as "weird" (we think allos are the weird ones, just for the record). So that's how you get an eighteen-year-old who has never, uh, _tickled his pickle_ or had anyone else do it for him. As a final note, I have been informed of a Google fail for the word _ascendant_, which is a genealogical term for anyone coming before/above a person in a lineage (opposed to _ancestor_ which skips more recent generations). Apparently, Google only turns up the astrological and geometric definitions.

**Dedication:** to Kim (Tippy LaRoux), who made a challenge that had the prompt "Write Smut" and then declared that she accepted masturbation as fulfilling that. [raises a glass of pumpkin cider] Here's to using the fine lines of the FFN rating definitions as a tightrope instead of a jump rope.

**Submitting Info:**  
**Stacked with:** Hogwarts (Term 10); MC4A  
**Individual Challenges:** In a Flash (N); Gryffindor MC; Yellow Ribbon (N); Yellow Ribbon Redux (N); Ethnic & Present (N)  
**House:** Hufflepuff  
**Assignment No.:** Term 10 – Assignment 5  
**Subject (Task No.):** Muggle Art (Masterpieces) - Task No. 1 (Write a fic set at night.)  
**Other Challenges (Prompts):** 365 Words (81 - Desire); Insane Prompt Challenge (689 - No Dialogue); Cabin Fever (Tantric - Write Smut)  
**Word Count:** 1077 words

(^^)  
**Quicken the Night**  
(^^)

Harry stretched out on the quilt that he had laid on the ground earlier, when he had prepared the area. He hadn't bothered with dressing after the ritual bath he had taken just before heading towards the stone circle that served as the main anchor point for all the wards of the Potter estate, and the nudity left him feeling exposed in ways that were both terrifying and exciting. The warmth of day still made the night air heavy, but if Harry was completely honest, the knowledge of what he was about to do felt heavier.

The magic of Kilnford stirred sluggishly around him, not fully awakened from its long slumber but interested in what had already begun. His personal magic rippled through him and the air immediately surrounding him. The steps necessary to reawaken the previously abandoned Potter seat had already started making his magic reach for the familial magic imbued in the land around him. Magic had always been reactive to him, and after the events of the Battle of Hogwarts, that reactiveness had just grown.

It made coming here feel less like satisfying a curiosity and more like regaining a limb he hadn't known was missing. Even the instructions left for how to renew the bond between family and estate had felt _right_, despite Harry's general disinterest in that kind of activity. Now that he was laying in the center of the circle, staring at the star-filled sky above, that feeling was moving beyond simple stirring of connection to a pull demanding fulfillment.

Harry didn't know what he was supposed to do. His only experience with these things was Ginny and everything they had done had been things that she had initiated. The pangs that normally accompanied thoughts of his _inadequacies_ and the way it had been a factor in Ginny deciding to not date him again didn't hurt as much as they normally did. Harry didn't know if that was acceptance of it or the magic of the ritual. He didn't know if he cared either way. It did give him an idea of where to start, though.

He touched his lips softly. The odd feeling made him lick his lips. He shivered as he felt the flick of his tongue against the tips of his fingers. Harry closed his eyes to analyze the strange tingling, his mouth falling open at the same time. His first two fingers slipped into his mouth until the first knuckle, increasing the sensation tingling through him. Instinctively, he swallowed around their slight weight on his tongue, shivering at how that made his nipples as well as the muscles low in his stomach tighten.

Kilnford's magic began actively caressing his own. It felt _electric_, like the time Dudley had him stick a fork in the wall socket except instead of spreading pain, there was only pleasure. His skin felt too tight suddenly. Harry ran his fingers down his chest, shivering again as the air chilled the dampness left behind by the fingers that had been in his mouth. He felt both tense enough to have turned to stone and too loose, like he was melting into the blanket and then the ground beneath it.

No wonder so many of his dormmates had been obsessed with this during their last few years. As he brushed over the juts of his hip bones, he arched his back. His heels pressed into the ground to support it, but the movement forced his knees to fall apart, exposing a new portion of his body to the night air. Harry couldn't stop the hitch of his breath any more than he could stop the way his penis jerked against his stomach.

He _wanted_.

He didn't know exactly what it was that he wanted, but the desire had subsumed the entirety of his being. Magic swirled around him in colorful tendrils perceivable with a sight independent of his eyes. It was more than simply colors, too. It was flavors and scents and _textures_—so many textures ranging from softness like rabbit-fur to the smoothness of leather. It was too much. It was not nearly enough. It was confusion and enlightenment; the flame of a phoenix and the chill of a dementor.

Harry had never felt so alive and yet so certain that he was going to die.

Finally, he wrapped his hand around the swollen girth of his penis. He arched into the touch, chasing it as if it was going to leave him. He knew that he controlled it, that it was _his_ hand, but the pleasure zinging through him was so new, so foreign, that a part of him doubted it all. He didn't hold back his moan as he started to pump the length. He swept his thumb across the head, collecting the liquid that was already leaking to fill the air around him with a musk as darkly rich as the night around him.

Harry could hear Kilnford calling to him, to the very core of him, urging him to complete the ritual and renew the bond. It was almost as audible as the hum that the bluestone monoliths that made up the stone circle were making as they filled with the quickening magic of the Potter family going back all the way to the first of their line to earn the title of _Patra_, which would eventually be anglicized to the surname he now bore. Kilnford knew him, from when he was nothing more than a desperate hope being carried with a determined will and a beseeching prayer, and it called him by a different name based upon that.

_Haridard_, it screamed and begged and cajoled. _He who takes away suffering_.

Despite having never heard the name before, Harry recognized it just the same. The knowledge of it bloomed within him like a shining white lotus, and with his acceptance of it, the pleasure burst into enough stars to rival the sky above him. The magic pulsed along with the spend already starting to dry to opaqueness against his sienna skin.

Harry relaxed against the blanket, filled with a lassitude he had never known could exist. With the magic of Kilnford and every ascendant that had come before him surrounding him, he felt completely safe for the first time he could remember. Kilnford purred in pleasure at that, wrapping warmly around him.

A weight he had never realized being present lifted.

Anchored fully to the familial wards, Harry slept soundly.


End file.
